


Aila

by LadyTroll



Category: Gothic (Video Games)
Genre: Don't Have to Know Canon, Don't copy to another site, Dubious Consent, Eventual Happy Ending, Gen, I hereby promise there are no graphic sex scenes here, Poverty, Slavery, Unhealthy Relationships, Violence, at least for two of the characters, contradicting worldviews, rape mention, slavers are pieces of shit pass it on, some gore, timeline is and is not canon compliant at the same time, trigger warning: pedophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 05:49:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20634122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyTroll/pseuds/LadyTroll
Summary: Because nobody will simply give you your freedom, unless you tear a piece of it for yourself.





	Aila

**Author's Note:**

> Real tired of the abundance of ''female props'' in Gothic, whose main tasks are to look pretty, provide sex, and need a Strong Man™ by their side. Aila, my girl, you're going to take your life in your own hands whether you like it or not.
> 
> * "timeline is and is not canon compliant at the same time"" means I gave up on trying to find a coherent one.

She grows up in the shambles of what is left over from a rich land after conflict tore through it. As the winners collect the spoils of their victories, her parents, once a wealthy merchant family, are forced to give up more and more of their wealth until they are left to scrape a sorry existence out of a land that is as dry as her mother’s eyes. The last blow to her family is the untimely sinking of the ship, belonging to her father, along with the goods it is carrying. After a year, the collectors are knocking on their door daily, sometimes multiple times a day. After a year and a half, people in the streets sneer and point fingers when they see them walking.

She is five when they move to the house outside the city – the last property her family owns – where the lowest of their servants used to live. There are no servants or slaves now to bow to her mother’s every whim and run from room to room, none of which have ever seen a carpet. The roof shows holes, and there is draught everywhere that becomes nigh unbearable in the cold desert nights. There is a garden outside, but it is dry, and the earth – bathed in blood of the armies that have marched over it, and nothing takes on. Her mother seeks work with former friends, as a simple washerwoman. Her father tries his hand first in one, then another job, until a former partner takes him on, as a docker. The work is hard; her mother’s hands are rough and calloused, and her skin is dry and cracked from the hot water and soap; her father’s temper is as short as ever, and he is not afraid to lash out on own family now that there are no slaves there to take his anger out on.

She is seven when her father takes her by the hand and leads her up the road, to Ben Sala. She does not know why her mother is crying that day. In the village, a fat Hashishin takes her by the hand and hands her father a leather pouch. She does not understand why her father turns and walks away and why she must go with the stranger now. They spend a few days on the road, until they arrive at the marketplace of Ben Erai. Coin changes hands again, fingers lock around her wrist, and she is whisked away to the second floor of a house and has a broom taller than herself pushed into her hands. She sweeps floors, carries water, wipes dust and peels vegetables and fruit. In return, she gets a bowl of food and a rug to sleep on, and the domina sees in her a scapegoat so that her own children do not have to bear mother’s bad mood. Children pull her hair and mock her relentlessly. Desert rat, they call her.

She is ten when her masters move up North, to the middle of the continent, and, while traveling through Braga, she changes hands again, for they care little about bringing old slaves with them. She spends a few days first in the cages meant for slaves and then on the auction block that is nothing more than a small stage erected on the side of the village, away from the main trade route, to avoid offending the eyes of passing travellers with the sight of famished carcasses of what might or might not be humans any longer. There are two other girls about her age: Alima and Yasmin. They are beautiful, like a matching set of dolls, pampered and taken care of for their looks, and they dream of the rich households in Mora Sul, the largest merchant city far to the South, an old slaver fortress, surrounded by ruins just like Braga. One day, they brag, they will belong to the rich merchants there and spend their life in luxury. Then viewers gather around the platform, and the slaves are prodded and examined, and her two little friends are quickly whisked away by a trader and begin their journey South, their feet dangling merrily over the side of the cart, and their cheerful laughter fills the solemn ruin fields.

For little coin, she is sold to the house of the honoured Nafalem. On the very first day, she is instructed to look down when there are other people present, and never to look the masters in the eye. Failure to meet the demand is met with harsh consequences as her dominus lashes out time and again when she forgets her place. She sweeps floors, carries water, prepares food, and the magician sends her to learn from the local women, so she would either be more useful, or bring in more coin at the marketplace as a schooled one. She is clumsy at the beginning; her arms and legs, tired after three years of restless days and short nights, are unwilling to obey, and the teachers are impatient, harsh, and quick with their punishments, but she begins to grasp the sciences of dance and art, and her tongue loosens for conversations after years of silent service. The women make comments on her beauty time and again, praising it as something extraordinary, for a slave, and she enjoys their praise as much as she has come to enjoy dancing.

She is fourteen when Nafalem forces himself on her the first time. Afterwards, dominus sends her to more teachers, to study the art of pleasuring men, and she hates herself for how good she is at it. He showers her in expensive gifts and gives her own room that is small, but a luxury after spending years on a dirty bedroll on the floor – all of which pale to the promises he whispers to her in the night. “Just a little more,” he grunts, “and I will make you free, and my wife,” as he rapes her time and again, and she hates herself for letting his promises get to her. She hates herself for the enjoyment these encounters bring her, but she takes pleasure from them; a sick pleasure that makes her stomach turn into knots when she thinks about it. But the promise of freedom is too great to resist; so great she stops counting years spent and, instead, starts counting the days to the fulfilment of her wish.

She does not know how old she is anymore. There is still a war raging up in the North, and orcs have come to the desert, invited by Zuben and the Dark magicians, for they share the faith in the same god. She hates Nafalem more and more with every passing day, with every passing hour he spends seated on his throne and watching her dance, with every passing hour he spends drooling in his sleep, with every passing minute he spends enjoying her flesh as he pounds away, bleating like a retarded sheep.

It is early in the noon still when she hears screaming outside the tent of her teacher. Somebody lifts the curtain separating them from the rest of the world. The old woman is screaming, throwing things at the intruder who lingers only shortly before he grabs the young woman by the wrist and pulls her outside.

The desert sand is scalding under her naked feet as she is dragged through the ruin fields surrounding Braga and up the hillside. During the walk, the sun scorches her bare shoulders, and the hot winds rolling in from the depths of the desert bring along sand that burns her face and gets in the eyes, and it feels like daggers are being dragged across her skin. The cool darkness of the cave they finally arrive to is therefore a welcome change that turns into shiver as soon as her skin cools down. Finally, somebody throws her a woollen blanket, and she has never been more grateful.

They ask her questions, none of which she can answer. It is clear they have thought her to be the child of a rich merchant, not a common slave girl. The nomads, she has heard of them. The old women in Braga tell horror stories of them, and time and again do scouting parties return, bearing a body or two of their comrades with long arrows drenched in cactus poison still stuck in their chest. If the men are not dead upon arrival, they die in horrible torture within a couple of hours. Rumours go around the settlement that the desert rats string up their enemies at the waystations like morbid puppets after gutting them out. From the angry look on her captor’s face, she believes she is to become one of those.

It is late night, and she is drowsy and falling asleep, when commotion arises at the entrance of the cave. A few of the nomads reach for their weapons, when a man appears in the entrance, and the faces of people settled around the fire lighten up at once. They exchange a few words, and her captor gestures at the corner where the prisoner is sitting, a scowl on his scarred face.

Aila does not know how long she has spent here. The days and nights pass by in a flurry; there is always something to do, something to fix, something to take care of – on the contrary to Braga where they are spent in a lazy haze in Nafalem’s house. She is not allowed to leave the cave, for they fear she might run and hand her captors to the Hashishin, but there is a lot to do inside the temporary settlement as well. Needless to say, she is not disembowelled and strung up at a waystation; the nomads treat her like one of their own, accepting her in their midst. Asaru, as Aila learns is the name of their leader, the same man from her first night among them, is kind. He does not fear throwing the truth in one’s face, his hands are rough and calloused from hard work and battles alike, and his body is covered in scars, but he is kind and treats Aila with respect that she had long forgotten the feeling of.

Asaru demands she must look him in the eye when they talk, just like with everybody else. It has been long – or perhaps it has never occurred that Aila has spoken to another person as equals, and, for the first few days, she flinches at the times she does fulfil Asaru’s request, always waiting for a hand to be raised to slap her across the face for daring to merely lift her gaze. Gradually, Aila loosens up and feels safer by the day.

She watches the clan go about their daily routine and is surprised to find just how much it differs from the Hashishin and the northerners’. In Braga, Bakaresh and the North, it is accustomed for the masters to rest idly in the shade while slaves and peasants do work for them, and the warriors, both Hashishin and those clad in steels, know no other work than the path of a warrior. Among nomads, warriors are first workers, only then warriors. Even Asaru, despite being their leader, gets to work just like everybody else. The nomads, he explains when Aila wonders, live off what they can tear from the desert’s grasp. “If you do not work,” he says, “you will die of hunger, thirst, or exposure.” Everything they need has to be made by their own hand; from bowls to bedrolls, to most of their tools and weapons.

Soon, Aila already partakes in the daily life of the clan. It takes some time to get used to the fact that there is nobody to order her around and she has free choice over what she wants to help with. At the beginning, she settles for what she knows best – preparing food and cleaning up afterwards. Later, one of the older women teaches her what she calls crochet – a simple and fast way of making woollen blankets on the road when no loom is available. Other skills soon follow. For the first time in many years, Aila finally feels free.

Regardless, she remains a slave of Nafalem’s, and, as such, only he can see her set free. Aila wants to go back, for, as much as she hates the magician and the thought of it, she craves to hear those words, those promises of freedom he mutters to her in his haze at night. Freedom is such magical word to her, something in such distant past now, that Aila is not certain she once had it and was not born a slave instead. Traveling with them is freedom, Asaru says. Not with Nafalem’s leash around her next, Aila thinks.

Eventually, she confides in him about Nafalem’s promises.

At first, Asaru laughs, only to silence when he understands Aila is serious. His jaw sets and teeth grind, and, for the first time in her life among the nomads, Aila feels like she has done something wrong.

“Silly girl,” Asaru tells her, his face the hardness of the stone around them, yet his voice is kind regardless, “nobody will just give it to you. If you want freedom, you have to take it. Tear yourself a piece of it, hold onto it with teeth and claws and never let go again.”

That night, Aila thinks long and hard. Asaru is out on a patrol with other nomads, and Aila has all the time in the world as she sits on her bedroll and turns everything over in her head time and again. A couple of strangers have been sited in the area who might be Hashishin soldiers, just like they might simply be hunters looking for snappers living on the hillside to the north, and, for the first time since her arrival, Aila fears they might be scouts, sent by Nafalem to see her returned to his side. The nomads return with good news, however, as the hunters are just that – snapper hunters out for the exceptional skins. They bring news of a Water magician hiding in the ruin fields of Braga as well – Asaru’s scout has spotted the man, yet been unable to contact him due to the Hashishin patrols in the area, but they have left him a message. A shot in the dark, but there is hope yet.

Next evening, when the clan has settled for the night, Aila shares her thoughts with Asaru, and, unsurprisingly, together they hatch a plan. For the next couple of weeks, everything is the same. Aila still wonders about the nomad lifestyle; with Hashishin and the northerners, it is unheard of that women take up weapons and take turns with men to stand on guard duty. Here, she watches women train with weapons and women weave and fix clothes, and she watches men train with weapons and men weave and fix clothes. It is not like there are a lot of the free folk of the desert left, Asaru explains when she asks him about this. They cannot afford such luxury as dividing work here – one simply does what they must, for neither the Northern king nor the Hashishin will bat an eye if the nomads are swallowed by the desert. And thus, Aila takes up the sword as well. It feels heavy in her hands at first, but it is easy for her to learn the flowing moves that appear as much art to her as dancing is. She still dances, occasionally, in the evenings when the cave is dark and the tribe is gathered around the fire in its centre, accompanied by the encouraging cheers and clapping of the people she has now come to call her own.

After a couple of weeks, a man in blue robes – the Water magician they have succeeded in contacting – arrives, but with a stranger in tow. After a short exchange with them, Asaru gestures at her, and Aila knows it is time. And thus, she wraps a scarf around her head and shoulders to protect her from the sun outside and finally leaves the cave. The sun is searing and merciless as she follows the stranger back to Braga. The stranger keeps silent, and so does Aila. Long after noon, they arrive at the settlement, and she is brought to the house of Nafalem’s. Changes have occurred while she was gone, and Nafalem is now the governor of Braga, after Tufail’s fall from Zuben’s graces, yet it does not come as a surprise, for Aila knows this from Asaru.

Nafalem receives his slave with open arms. She is bathed, and her body is scrubbed with luxurious herbal essences until it glistens just like it did before the desert. She is once again dressed in expensive fabrics and jewellery gifted by the Dark magician, and she returns to his throne room and her duties. Nafalem demands to know everything, including the tiniest details, of her time with the nomads, and she takes to lying. The magician hears what he wants to hear, what all the Hashishin want to hear, and he is left satisfied. A scouting party is sent into the hills to check whether the words are true; all they find are a couple of bodies burnt in the desert sun and crippled by the jackals and other predators, and the cave where the clan had settled is now abandoned.

Asaru has led his people deeper into the hill area, maybe even to the sea, as soon as she left their settlement. The sea, she wonders while repeating moves that come to her as easy as walking and leave mind empty for other thoughts. She does not remember the sea; such long time has passed since Bakaresh and her parents that it might as well have been in another life.

A week passes, then another. Every evening after sundown she lights a lamp in the window of her room and waits, and waits, and there is no answer. Weeks turn into a month, and then there are more months. Days blur into one as there is no change in her daily routine – waking, bathing, dressing, dancing, playing the harp, Nafalem’s rump in her bed at night, his promises of freedom that have long lost their meaning and just make her resent him more, and then everything repeats. Caravans go and return from the North, and the Hashishin and the orcs in the desert are getting uneasy about what news they bear each time. Nafalem rubs his hands together – the Dark magician feels the change coming to Varant as well, and he knows what each and every other follower of Beliar knows as well: Zuben is weak, his hold on the land is weakening by the week, and soon somebody courageous enough will do away with the Chosen One of Beliar’s, and then the land will be under new rule. And who is to say this rule will not be Nafalem’s? He plans a visit to Bakaresh in the upcoming weeks, to meet up with his colleagues there and ensure his candidature for the throne in Ishtar has support among them.

Aila knows something is brewing when dominus orders her to pick out her best dress and jewellery, and she instinctively feels that she will no longer be coming back to Braga. Her education has come to an end, and so have Nafalem’s promises he whispered her in the dark of the night. She is but a fancy toy – a luxury good he can now use as currency to buy his way to the goal.

And still, every night before departure, she lights the lamp and waits for a signal from the desert. Perhaps Asaru has failed to gather the forces needed, or he has discarded the idea entirely. On her last night in Braga, she wonders if she should light it again. She almost, almost does not, and yet something prods her inside, forcing to ignite the lamp one last time.

For a while, she stares into the darkness beyond the ruin fields before she sees them – not one, but two lights among the bulky stones that have once formed the walls of a great building. They flicker and go out, then light up; they go out and light up again; the people holding them cover the lights and remove their palms again. And again, and again.

Nafalem’s bedchamber is dark, lit up by a single oil lamp in the corner. The magician stirs and slowly awakens as long fingers slide down his face. In the shadows, his lips form a smile as dominus recognizes her. She pulls his covers down and straddles his hips, enticing the man. Nafalem gives a wistful, longing moan as she sits atop of him, and grinds his manhood against her. She leans forwards and strokes the man’s cheek again.

Nafalem’s teeth clench, his body jerks as he tries his damnedest to throw her off, but he has spent his years in utter idleness and, now risen from his sleep, is as overpowered by the slave girl as she once was by him. A few of his teeth break, so hard they have been clenched, and finally a howl comes out, muffled by the pillow shoved upon his face and that he bites into.

“The thing about mages,” Asaru has said, “is that, regardless of how many undead they can summon, knives still gut them like they were pigs brought in for slaughter.”

The obsidian knife, brought secretly into Braga under her clothes and dipped in rich cactus poison from Nafalem’s own supplies, moves up, cutting through the skin and the fat, and the muscles, gutting the body as its owner shrieks into the soft, fluffy fabric shoved into his mouth. The fabric tears, and the man begins choking on down feathers that are suddenly everywhere. By the time the knife leaves his flesh, Nafalem is but a piece of meat covered in blood, gore, piss, excrements and white down, half the insides spilled onto clean sheets.

Tripping over their halberds, two guards run into the room as they hurry to raise their governor from sleep. One of them steps back, pale as the snows in Nordmar, while the other bends over and empties his stomach right there on the expensive carpet. Outside, alarm is sounded as nomads overrun the Hashishin and Braga becomes a whirlpool of panic and violence. The slave girl has already slipped away through the secret exit of the room which Nafalem himself, in his bravura, has shown her in the past. As the inhabitants of Braga are brought into the centre of the village, the Hashishin on their knees, with their hands tied behind their backs, and snarling through the fabric knots in their mouths, she moves among the tents surrounding the settlement.

They are both covered in blood and gore when Aila finally finds Asaru, but he is smiling, and a relieved laughter is building up in their chest, and it feels as if a great weight has been lifted from the shoulders of them both.

**Author's Note:**

> Seriously, lads, obsidian blades? Mad sharp.


End file.
